Lots of ways for thieves to steal in electronic age

That’s what police suspect in St. Thomas, where a woman shopping in a retail store learned someone later used her card to order merchandise to be shipped to Montreal.

While police aren’t certain how the credit card data was stolen, investigating officer Jeff Pallister thinks one of the chilling possibilities is this: A thief set up shop with a laptop near the store to steal credit data without ever stepping foot in the store.

“Is there someone out there doing this? That’s a possibility,” he said Monday.

Identity thieves can prey on shoppers at stores that use wireless networks that lack passwords or have faulty ways of encrypting data, said Nikki Junker, the social media manager for the Identity Theft Resource Centre, a non-profit group based in San Diego, CA.

The risk is high enough that the centre recommends consumers use credit cards rather than debit cards; banks will generally reimburse for money fraudulently charges on credit cards but not for those who use debit.

“Debit cards are just dangerous . . . (Banks) are going to try a lot harder to get their money back (from credit cards) than to get your money back (from debit cards),” Junker said.

While larger American stores tend to use wired rather than wireless connections to transmit credit and debit data, there’s no easy way for consumers to know what is in place in any particular store, she said.

There’s another way for scammers to remotely access credit cards that have a chip that transmits data using radio waves, so called Radio Frequency Identification, said Walt Augustinowicz, who owns a Florida-based company that promises to protect against such threats, Identity Stronghold.

“If they have that chip, it’s very easy to skim (take data from) those cards,” Augustinowicz said. “Always keep an eye on where you are using credit cards and whose around you,” he said.

St. Thomas police don’t have a suspect yet but have provided the Montreal shipping address to police there in the hope of finding someone.

In the meantime, with so many shoppers out, Pallister says they should pay heed: “It’s the busiest time of the year for scamming operations.”